2015 - Listening is a dying art. We hardly listen to understand. We only listen to refute or reply.

2014: The most beautiful things in the world cannot be touched or seen but are only felt with the heart2013: Corruption is the root cause of economic slowdown in India2012: i) Poverty is a big menace in India. Due to its complexity and magnitude, most of the government initiatives fail.ii) Poverty is a consequence of failure of government policies due to the fact that governments do not target the root causes.2011: “The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. “

2010:“Earth provide enough to satisfy every man’s need but not every man’s greed need”

2009: “The Inherent vice of Capitalism is unequal sharing of blessings and the inherent virtue of Socialism is equal sharing of misery”.

2008: “Consequences of Gender Imbalance - The Third World War”.

2007: “Economic growth without environmental damage – a mirage or a reality.”

2006:"India has one of the largest pool of talented manpower – but few innovations and patented products"

2005: More than one billion Indians: A gigantic problem or a sea of opportunities.

2004: Asked at the age of 83, as to which of his project would he choose as his master piece, Frank Lloyd wright, the architect answered, “The next one”

2003: To give real service, one needs to add something that cannot be bought or measured, like sincerity and integrity.

2002: “Indian Economy in the Post WTO Era.”

2001: “Economic Growth without distributive justice can only lead to violence."

2000: Ships are safer in the harbour. But they are not meant for the same.

1999: “Television really is, another eye so you can see anywhere, another part of your heart so you can feel and care about things you never felt and cared about before, another ear to hear strange music.... The first and only international language.”

1998: “Max Weber, a German Sociologist, defined state as an entity that has a monopoly over legal violence. India proves that the converse is also true; if criminals cannot be punished by the law, its effect they become the state.”

1997: “By the third or fourth week of the term, business school had succeeded in affecting me with a variation of the Stockholm syndrome, named after the incident in which a hostage in a Stockholm bank robbery fell in love with one of her captors”

Your attitude makes an impact on things you do. It is also the key factor that marks the difference between success and failures. All your preparation may go for a toss if you don’t have the right attitude towards the things you do. Few of the things which will surely help you in your preparation are enlisted below:

Keep yourself motivatedMotivation is the driving force for most of our achievements in life. We need to have zeal towards our target and must have a “can do it” attitude for the same. Never let negative thoughts come in your mind. Try to avoid people who are discouraging and de-motivating. Nothing in life is impossible to achieve. You can reach all your dreams if you are determined and have a positive approach.

Be Focused
If you are really serious about doing MBA from any of the top institutions then you should be focused and striving hard towards your goal. Keep yourself reminding about your goal and you are surely going to achieve it with your perseverance. Divide your preparation in smaller parts, check your preparation periodically by attempting questions from the prepared areas and then analyze your results to find if your preparation going in right direction or not.

Mastering Time Management
Time management would is the key factor to your success. You need to use your time as efficiently as possible. Attempting the questions blindly like you used to do in your school or college won’t be helpful anymore. The key to getting ahead of others in such competitive exams is your ability to adapt yourself according to the situation. As soon as you get the question paper you can have the following approach:1. Quickly Scan the questions
2. Mark the questions you feel you are comfortable with.
3. Select and solve the questions from the ones marked above depending on their difficulty and the amount of time they will take. The easier ones which will take least amount of time must be solved first and only then you should move to difficult ones.

Work on your Communication SkillsClearing the written test is not the end of your preparation. You need to focus on the big picture i.e. pursuing MBA from a top institution. You surely have to see beyond that and keep your self prepared for group discussion and personal interviews. Every one has ideas in their mind but the most important thing is how well you convey all your ideas efficiently to the group or the interviewer.

Developing right Interests
Right interests will surely aid your preparation and help you in getting ahead of others without stressing yourself much. Many a skills will get developed naturally in you if your interests are right. Say for e.g. Reading books or articles on diversified topics will surely improve your reading speed. Even your achievements in your college extra curricular activities or any achievement in the organization you are working for will add value to your profile. Work on your communication skills by directly talking with people and try to remove any hesitations within yourself. Other helpful interests could be doing mental calculations, thinking creatively, having a mature opinion about things happening in the world.

Improve your Body Language
Body language is an indicator of your personality. A body language depicting confidence and maturity is the desired quality of a future manager. An interviewer closely monitors and evaluates you on the basis of your body language. A negative body language can also ruin the chances of an otherwise intelligent person.

Be Open to accept new ideas.Keep yourself open for new ideas. Talk with other people and try to understand and analyze there views. Don’t have a vague and predetermined opinion in your mind about any thing. Try to understand the situation, analyze it and then conclude on it with the help of solid reasoning.

Practice a lot
Mock Tests should be utilized to develop skills such as time management, smart selection of questions and developing a flexible approach towards attempting the paper. Try to learn from mistakes in your Mock papers. Try to improve your approach towards solving the paper and you have to find out on your own what works best for you. Say for e.g. you should not attempt a RC passage in last 5 minutes of tour test. Also solving a lengthy Logical Reasoning question which requires lots of analysis in last 5 minutes is not suggested. Such things you need to find on your own as things work differently for different people depending on their strengths and weaknesses.

NOTEIf you are unable to download from rapidshare(as its limited to few downloads), you can download most of the papers and resources from following link:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/go4cat2008/files/You can go to the above link (yahoo group) with following user name and passowrd:
Username: files4cat
password: download
Sorry i could not find any place where free & unlimited file sharing is possible.

You should always start your preparation by analysing your strengths and weaknesses.This will help you in planning your efforts efficiently.

Following are some of the basic strengths which will enable a candidate to sail across CAT:

1.Has a decent reading speed2.Good at solving puzzles3.Has a decent grammatical aptitude4.Ability to analyze, understand and adapt to a new situation very fast5.Ability to take right decisions in lest amount of time6.Ability to cope with the time pressure by proper time management7.Most importantly ability to choose questions in a smart way, as per his strengths.

You need to work on the skills mentioned above and try to develop them within yourself.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

1. Find out your areas of improvement:You need to introspect and find out where do you stand and what all resources you need to crack CAT. CAT could be broadly classified into following 4 areas:1. Quantitative Aptitude2. Logical Reasoning3. Verbal Analysis and4. Data InterpretationEach of these area's have various topics from where questions are asked in CAT.To start with you must find out which all areas you are conferrable with and which one are those where you need to improve on.You will have to start putting effort depending on the number. of areas of improvement. More the number of areas of improvement more preparation time is needed.

2. Need of Classroom Coaching, is it really needed?Whether to join a coaching or not solely depends on a person's current level of expertise in verbal, maths and logical reasoning. To explain it better take example of Loans. To buy a car costing 1 Lac rupees how much loan one has to take totally depends on how much money he/she is currently owning. If a person is owning 1 lac then he doesn't need to take any loan :). Though one should definitely join Mock Tests. Continuing on the car example, Mock Tests are like learning driving before you buy a car ;).

Furthermore it totally depends on the discretion of candidate. If he feels he requires
coaching in certain areas which he cannot improve by self preparation, he should join a coaching. But always remember one
thing to crack the questions that comes in exams like CAT requires a
good foundation which comes along with your schooling till 12th
standard.How to find out whether you need coaching for exams like CAT or not?One simple way to find out this for those people who are going to attempt CAT for the first time in 2008 is by attempting free online mock CAT or attempting past year CAT papers. Attempt any of the two test papers of CAT from recent years. Do brush up your fundamentals before attempting any of these papers. When you attempt the past papers try to solve as many question as possible without putting any time constraints. If you are able to attempt around 25% of question correctly in each section then you don’t need to join any coaching.You only need to work on time management & smart selection of questions. But if you score is less than 20% in all these sections then joining coaching would surely help you.Click here to Take free Online Mock CATClick here to download Past Papers of CAT & other MBA exams 3. Mock CATs, How helpfull are they?Along with your expertise , the other most important thing to succeed in exams like CAT is toa. Manage your time properly andb. Smart selection of questions.One can easily master these two things with abundant practice. Mock CATs
are the best way to practice as it simulates a scenario which is
similar to the real exam. Mock CAT provides the exact CAT like platform which enables candidates to master the time management and cope of up with the pressure.

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. "

Candidates aspiring to get admission into IIMs & other elite management schools need to appear for Common Admission Test (CAT). The exam is scheduled to happen on 3rd Sunday of November (16th November 2008). The admission procedure starts in the month of July with the issue of CAT Bulletins.Click to View->CAT BulletinsClick to View->CAT Elgibility CriteriaClick to View->CAT Clarifications on EligibilityCAT Admission Process:
Following are the steps to be taken for writng CAT exam:1. Fill the CAT Application form submit it to the IIM in your zone. Deatils of application form can be seen here: http://www.catiim.in/

2. If you want to apply for colleges apart from IIMs then you need to fill seperate application form for each of them. You need to seperately apply for colleges such MDI, SP Jain, IMT (they all accept the CAT score). For IIMs no seperate application is required

3. Write CAT Exam which happens on 3rd sunday of Novemebr each Year

4. Depending on your CAT Score you may or may not get calls from the IIMs & other instt. you have applied for in Step2 above.

5. Next in the admission process (i.e. after getting calls) , you would be required to appear in Group Discussion and Personal Interview.

6. Depending on your consolidated performance in CAT, GD & PI and even on your profile you would be offered a seat in a college.Details about the CAT Paper
CAT paper comprises of following three sections:

Quantitative Aptitude Test

This section tests the mathematical aptitude of a candidate. The questions asked in this section are from various areas of mathematics such as arithmetic, algebra, geometry

Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning

The prime focus of this section is to test the logical and analytical ability of a candidate. Most of the question depict a real life scenario followed by a group of questions related with it.

English Usage and Comprehension

The focus in this section has lately shifted from grammar to analytical ability. Reading comprehension is one of the most important part of this section.